TiVo Community Forums Archives - Generic Drive has 10MB problem too

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Generic Drive has 10MB problem too
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Posted by: KMF

I read the 120GB maxtor thread and may have a similar problem. I tried to upgrade my Series 1 Sony by replacing the drive with a new 60GB drive. I ran the MFSTools backup-restore and the command to release the additional freespace. I put the drive in the Tivo and it worked
but still only showed 30hrs. I tried to run the process again but when I tried to restore, I got the message that there was not enough space on the destination drive. I checked the partitions and there was only 1 of 10MB. Now the bios on my PC and any drive or partition utility MaxBlast, PowerMax, Partition Magic, and Fdisk (Dos or Linux) only shows the drive as being 10MB.

The drive is a "Generic AT60 series 3.5" purchased at a computer show. It formatted to 60GB fine when I originally initialized it. I noticed that it does have Quantum chips on it so I believe it is some sort of Quantum/Maxtor clone (fireball AS?).

My questions are:

1) Is there any way to tell from the firmware version if this is a drive subject the the Maxtor qunlock death trap or a genuine quantum drive that's been locked?

2) If not, is there a utility or command to determine if the drive is locked or if the qunlock (from booting in my Tivo) has killed it? That is, are there any non-destructive equivalents to qunlock? I just want to get the full 60GB drive back to use in my PC if possible.

Any thoughts, advice, suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,

KMF

Posted by: KMF

I fixed my problem. I booted the drive in the tivo, then without
unplugging the power, disconnected the IDE cable from Tivo and
hooked the drive up to the IDE cable in my PC. Then booted the
PC. I ran FDISK, cleared the partitions and created one new one.
Then formated the drive to 60 GB. I was then able to boot the PC
with the Tivo CD and run the back up restore again.

Booting the drive in the Tivo unlocked it, but you have to keep it
powered on so the firmware doesn't reset. (Note, I DID NOT USE
qunlock)

BTW, I have a Sony 2000 and the MfsTools (1.2 I think) did not
initially expand the drive. However, I downloaded the latest
version of MfsTools and ran the mfsadd command manually and it
worked!

I now have a mega-hour Tivo and it's awesome!

Cheers,

KMF